When It's Real, It Drives You Insane
by Outcastinthe21stcentury
Summary: Some of Stefan's thoughts during the Vampire Diaries season six teaser trailer... Damon/Elena.


Okay, so this is basically just a short one-shot to help get through the emotional turmoil that is the Vampire Diaries season six teaser trailer. I mean, I don't know whether to laugh because Elena loves Damon that much or cry because of how sad she is.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Vampire Diaries.

Stefan Salvatore stared down at his black coffee. Coffee. These days it feels like the most consistent thing in his life. Something he never really needed logically, but brought a sense of comfort and normalcy in his hectic life. Funny how up until a couple months ago, the thing that provided him that was his brother.

His brother, Damon Salvatore, sacrificed his own life for the sake of his brother. Yes, Damon Salvatore, the bad brother. The brother who abused Caroline, almost bit Bonnie and technically killed Jeremy and Matt was the one who saved them all. Well, at least they were all saved physically. Elena wasn't looking so good mentally.

When he first died, she never bothered getting out of her room, just crying all day and all night. He would know. He heard every second of it. And then, when the miraculous day that she did emerge from the cocoon that she enslaved herself in, she kind of went on a ripper binge.

But extraordinarily, she hadn't flipped the switch. Because she knew that if she did, then all her love for Damon would dissipate. But the blood "helped her forget", as she claimed. "For a few minutes, I just forgot. I forgot that I lost the love of my life and my best friend simultaneously. I forget that my life was a never ending funeral. But then it's over. And that's when the guilt comes in. But it never lasts too long because it's always overshadowed with grief. And then I do the same thing again. It's like a painkiller. I take it again and again before it destroys me," as she wrote in her diary.

She used to lash out at them all sometimes, she would resent Saint Stefan himself and even Alaric. Stefan because they went on that suicide mission to save him and Alaric because if he hadn't crossed the border, Damon would have come back in time. Sometimes she also resents Caroline for secretly wanting him to die.

He tried to help her, really he did. But she couldn't be stopped. She would feed on innocent people and bleed them dry. He didn't want to give up on her, the same way she never gave up on him. But, how could he help her, anyway? He couldn't even help himself. And besides, he could never relate to what she was going through. Nobody could.

As much as it pained him to admit, it had to be said: Elena loved Damon more than she ever loved him. More than she's ever loved anyone, for that matter. She loved him unconditionally and irrevocably. Despite all the terrible things he'd done to her and all her loved ones. And he could never imagine loving somebody that much. Maybe that's why they broke up the first time, maybe they loved each other too much for the sake of their sanity.

But that's the problem with loving someone that much, how much pain it leaves you with when they leave you. Love is weakness, he constantly heard that throughout the years but never had he truly believed it until he saw the love his brother and the doppelgänger shared.

No, it wasn't that kind of love that you saw in the movies or read in the books. It was insane, twisted and obsessive but above all, it was real, it was true. Maybe that's why they say love's a weakness. Because when it's real, it drives you insane.

His train of thoughts were interrupted when his phone rang. 'Elena,' he read. He hit the call button before responding to her call.

"Stefan," she said hoarsely. He guessed that she'd been crying, as she had been doing often lately, "I can't keep doing this. I can't live without him."

He cringed at her words, knowing that she was probably about to destroy another human's life after their call ended. What he was worried about though, was when the blood wouldn't be enough anymore. What would she resort to then? He feared that that time was close.

"I need you to give me hope," she continued with the same tone, desperation laced onto her voice.

"I can't do that, Elena," he started, "Damon is gone. You need to say goodbye too."

The beeping sounds on the other end that signaled that Elena had hung up confirmed that Elena wouldn't take his words to heart. After all, one of the few things Damon and Elena had in common was their stubbornness.

When he was telling Elena to move on, he was saying it to himself as well. Because with Elena going all ripper on them, Stefan never gave himself time to grieve for his brother. 'Saint Stefan,' Damon would say, 'Always putting others before himself.'

He chuckled thinking about his brother's sarcastic humor. Although he never admit, Damon's occasional lack of seriousness at difficult times used to put Stefan at ease. When he and Damon were growing up and they'd get into trouble, Damon always made a joke of it and told him everything would be okay. At the time, Stefan looked up to his older brother, and when Damon said it would all work out and started goofing off, he just knew that it all just solve itself. Oddly enough, those rules still seemed to apply until his untimely death.

Sometimes he likes to wonder what life would be like if Damon had made it back in time. They would be happy. Or happier than they were now at least with the loss of Bonnie and all. Damon and Elena would have found their temporary 'happy ending' before some other supernatural chaos decided to take place.

Right now, other than Elena's breakdown, everything's been pretty much alright. Caroline, Jeremy, Alaric, Matt, all of them, really, had coped quite well with their friends' deaths. Though, Jeremy "talks" to Bonnie every night, begging her to find her way back. Alaric drinks more often though now. Whether it was for the blood lust or the grief was beyond Stefan.

Once again, his raging phone screeched, this time with a call from Caroline.

"Hello," he replied groggily, the lack of sleep getting to him.

"Hey Stefan," she began urgently, "Do you know that Elena has some sort of witch drug problem that allows her to hallucinate Damon?"

"She what?" He started, "But from where could she even get that kind of stuff?"

"My guess is a blond witch with a four lettered name that starts with 'L'," Caroline sighed, "So, what're we going to do now?"

"I don't know."

Because he truly didn't. He didn't know what the hell he was doing. Times like this he really wished Damon were still around. Because without him, they were all lost...


End file.
